Cooking with locals in Salvador

Our second guided tour in Salvador was a cooking experience with locals. We met with our tour guide Elmir at our hotel. He took us to Sao Joaquim market to buy fresh ingredients. The plan was to cook Moqueca de peixe a traditional Bahian seafood stew. Elmir gave us the ingredients list, explained what all the ingredients on the list mean and taught us how to ask for the price in Portuguese. People on the market were all very nice and communicative. Everyone was smiling and making jokes. We have to say that people in Brazil in general are very kind to each other and take a lot of their time for everyone. With the help of Elmir we bought all the ingredients and spent 17 Real (around six Euro) for tomatoes, onions, peppers, coconut milk, fresh ground coconut, palm oil, coriander and Acerola. Acerola are red berries from which we later made a sweet and sour juice. After the shopping at Sao Joaquim market we went to a fishermen community, where we were invited to cook with the fishermen’s wife in her house, which is in a favela close to the harbour. To get there we had to walk under a highway bridge and without knowing the way, it would be impossible to find it. The view from the favela is incredible, most of the houses have a direct view to the bay of “Todos os Santos”. The favela we visited is a modern favela as it has electricity and its own water supply. The house, we have been invited to, was directly next to the sea and we could have taken a bath by just going down a few steps. Our guide showed us a skyscraper just a few hundred meters away from the fishermen community and told us that apartments there with sea view cost around 1 Million Real. So the fishermen have chosen a really good spot for their place. The cooking went pretty fast and the result was delicious. The view from the balcony, where we had our lunch was priceless.